


the lungs of me be crowns over you

by Xekstrin



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Summer Rose Court, it's not explicit but there's no ambiguity either, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 17:00:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xekstrin/pseuds/Xekstrin
Summary: Time heals all wounds, but the darkness inside Ruby lingers long after her return from the void of Luna Fracta’s domain. And as much as she loves Blake, the young queen worries that the connection they share might take a turn for the worse. Linked by the soul, she feels the presence of her betrothed, and Crescent Rose, at all times.And she wonders.[Summer Rose Court AU]





	the lungs of me be crowns over you

I find Blake in the darkness, which isn't surprising. She has a habit of working late into the night, and letting the lights burn low before she becomes aware they're burning out. Her eyes can adjust to near-zero visibility, of course, so it's not like it hinders her. But I still find it funny, walking into her workshop and picking her out like a dark cloud on a moonless night.

Standing in the doorway, I listen to the sound of clicking sparks and then a rush of flame. Liquids bubble and boil, and if I didn't know any better I'd say it looks like a witch's haven. Even knowing better I do still think it looks a little sinister. The table is covered in glass vials and baubles, thermometers and measuring equipment. The windows are all open, of course, a fresh breeze always keeping the air from getting too clouded.

Blake still hasn't taught me the secret of how she keeps Grimm specimens from fading away. I honestly haven't pressed; it isn't important to me. I provide her with everything she needs for her to experiment in peace and my reward is that I get to see her smile. 

"If you're going to stay," Blake says without turning around, "Do you mind turning on the lamps?"

I roll my eyes a little. 

_Of course she knows I'm here._

"I don't know why I hold onto the fantasy that one day I'll be able to surprise you the way you always surprise me."

"Because you are a hopeless romantic," Blake says, ears flickering the way she does when she's amused.

I've gotten much better at predicting when, where, and how Blake will try to pounce on me from the cover of her semblance. However, her naturally soft footfall and uncannily good sense of distraction means at least once a month I'm left shrieking and twitching when a hand appears out of thin air to grab the back of the next and a mouth whispers, "boo."

"Whatcha workin' on?" I ask her, blinking a few times and fumbling in the dark.

"Personal things." The room brightens a little. 

I smile, watching her fondly. "Should I leave?"

"Absolutely not." 

Blake moves, focused on her task. She has a hot flask clutched in a pair of tongs, delicately placing it on a cooling rack. When she passes a gout of fire I see the mark of our Spirit in her. 

Her connection to Crescent manifested in some pretty unique ways. The whole concept is still so abstract to me, but shattered as she is, I feel like Crescent has become a part of us both. 

Not yet legally my wife and my equal, but functionally my heir, Blake is the next scion of Crescent Rose. The spirit marked her as my family was marked. A few strands of red hair at her temple, first. I noticed them when I brushed her hair one morning. Over the course of a year it bloomed into a long stripe of auburn, blending in with her raven tresses. Gradual and subtle, just like her. Hiding in the shadows. Only when Blake stands directly in the light can you see that dark crimson streak. 

Given permission to be nosy, I explore Blake's work station, devastatingly curious about her projects. "Okay, I recognize your little elixirs here," I said of her feminization potions, brewed and purified every other month. She must be due for a refill. "But what's in this bottle?" I ask, pointing to what I mean. Even I don't need to be told this is a look-don't-touch situation. 

"Oh," Blake says, "You know."

"No, I _don't_ know, as you know, or I wouldn't be asking."

In a few quick motions Blake strips off her gloves. They get tossed into a linen bag for soiled clothing and tools, to be cleaned and sterilized later. Then she grabs me, a harsh tug pulling my body up to hers. "Hold on. You're looking especially beautiful tonight."

A protest is cut off by her lips on mine. It's hard to think about words, or really anything at all, when Blake is kissing me. All that intense focus hones in on me and me alone, like I'm the only person in the world. Her tail winds around me, warm and roaming, but not as much as her hands. 

Not counting brief and innocent childhood experiences in the desert— done more to satisfy curiosity than any actual desire— I've never kissed anyone except Blake. So I don't really have anyone to compare her to. But I'm pretty sure she's the best kisser in the kingdom, and when we pull away I feel stuck to her like sap on a tree, one fist coiling in her hair. 

Still. "You're deflecting."

One ear flickers to the side. "Hmm. I really thought that would work."

Releasing my grip on her hair, I reach up to rub the little v forming between her bunched eyebrows. "I'm not gonna stop pestering you until you use your words to tell me to stop."

Her tail flicks once, hard. "You and your _obsession_ with communicating."

"Listen, we don't have to use words. But you have to come up with a consistent translation for the ear thing." I watch as one of them twitches. "See? What's that mean? Are we gonna do one twitch for yes, two for no? Consistency is key here."

She pinches my side and smirks in satisfaction at how it makes me squeak and flinch and giggle. Then she lets me go, turning her gaze to the work station. "It's... a perfume," she says, hesitantly. 

There were a lot of answers I expected. And quite a few I didn't. A perfume didn't even make the list. "Oh. Well that's cute."

Blake peers at me sideways. Her tail snakes around her own leg once, tensing before she forces it to relax. "I always wanted to make it," she volunteers before I have a chance to pry even more. "But Adam and Velvet, they were relying on me to make important things. I had a job to do. I couldn't be frivolous."

Her hand is warm in mine, knobby knuckles and calluses on her palm. If I'm obsessed with anything it's her hands, so graceful and strong enough to bruise with a grip. Those hands are magic, capable of wrenching every ounce of stress from my shoulders and back. They're the hands of a fighter, hard-won and heavily muscled. "What kinda things? Grimm material?"

"Grimm material. Acids and washes to manipulate the ferrous bark. Ensure whatever plants we harvested were edible. Make the feminization potions for anyone who needed them. Extract poisons to assassinate the queen. Brew medicine."

"What was that last one?"

"Brew medicine?" Blake says, with a smile too dark to entirely be called teasing. It looks downright vicious. I meet it with a purposefully blank, yet disappointed stare. "You are impossible to intimidate these days."

" _You_ can't intimidate me because I know you're nothing but fluff on the inside." 

To prove my point I gently fold her primary ear into my palm. It's still an incredible show of trust that she lets me do this. I want to writhe in glee every time I feel that velvety length and give it a good squeeze, because every single time she closes her eyes and lets out a deep purr. 

_God, I love her_.

I say it out loud, too. "I love you so much, Blake. If you showed up in my bed with a knife in your hand I'd let you carve out my heart without a second thought." 

The purring stops. "That's an extremely specific hypothetical."

"Uh." _Oh, dear._ "It might have popped up as a recurring nightmare in the really early days? Right after my vacation."

 _My vacation_ is how we tend to refer to the period of time I spent in the darkness. Sometimes I think I didn't spend months in there. After I killed Luna Fracta.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I think I spent much longer in there than any of us realized.

Much, much longer. 

_I think maybe Blake and I are the same age now, in a weird, technical way._

"I didn't know you had bad dreams about me," Blake says, and it's very carefully neutral. I can't tell if she's hurt or if she wants to know more, until her grin returns. "Was it really a nightmare though? Or a fantasy?"

I blink a few times. "Excuse me?"

Her arm is around my waist again, and my hands lift to her shoulders on instinct. "If I'm in your bed with a knife, Ruby, I'm not going to use it to hurt you."

An unexpected amount of heat surges up to my face. While I don't entirely ken her meaning, there's no mistaking her tone. And that just leaves me wondering what one could do with a knife where it wouldn't cause pain, but pleasure, as she's implying. 

"Mm," I try to agree, but it comes out as a squeak. 

Then she guides me, arm around my waist still, and leads me to a shelf full of her finished potions. 

"Pick one," she says. "If you like. These are ready to be worn. Take whatever you want."

They're all neatly labeled in Blake's immaculate handwriting. I take a moment to think, reading them all out loud. "Earthy, woodsy, resinous, floral... the last one is obvious but what do they mean?"

So Blake takes the time to walk me through each one and how she made them all. She lets me smell them and I decide the woodsy one smells nicest to me, kind of sharp, but not like a pine, exactly. Just good. And it makes me curious. "Which one do you wear? You always smell amazing."

Blake lifts a finger for my patience. She vanishes and reappears with another bottle, this one just labelled, _mine_. "You can try it if you want but it's balanced to react with my natural chemical makeup. So it might not smell as good on you. Sorry."

"That's cheating," I say.

"They're my perfumes," she responds.

"Well it's mine now," I say, and pocket a vial for myself. When she gives me a sour look I remind her, "You said I could take whichever one I wanted."

"Typical Rose monarch. Encroaching on Belladonna property without regard."

"Will it be war, then?"

"I see no other option."

Then she grabs me again, and despite all my frantic wiggling there's no escape as she starts tickling me even harder, chasing each shriek of laughter with a clinging kiss. Blake kisses me again, and again, each one forcing me to surrender until her demands are met.

* * *

The next day I spend in a haze. I have to ride out to the constructions that mark the ley lines, visiting with my uncle Q'row and Ozpin as they oversee development. As always, Crescent lingers like a folded serpent, piled up in a corner of my mind only to rouse when I am closest to the veins of her power.

Through the whole meeting I'm moody and distracted, until I go find a spot with a view and can sit in silence for a while. 

**What a shame our beautiful wife did not ride out with us.**

_We're not married yet,_ I say, because to address the other thing she says is more conversation than I want to have right now.

 **Our link is deeper than any bond you mortals can forge. But I can feel her all around us. It's something physical in the air we can taste. Can't you sense it?**

Now that she mentions it, I do sort of get the same feeling. Every so often I feel like Blake is standing right behind me, but when I turn around she's not there. It's to the point that I wonder if she's been stalking us quietly this whole time, invisible.

For the rest of the day I keep expecting to feel Blake touch me, or hear her voice in my ear. It's to the point that when I return home and saddle up Celica, I am both pleased and distressed to find Blake in the stables with Yang. 

My sister has Ember's reins in one hand and is offering them to my betrothed, who grimaces and declines. "I'm not ready for that yet, Yang."

"But you've gotten so good at riding Pumpkin!" she gestures to the old mare we keep, a big plodding creature who is impossible to startle and perfect for beginning riders. Swooping in to save Blake from Yang's enthusiasm, I step in between them and set my hands on my hips.

"Going from Pumpkin to a sand dragon is like trying to fly after you learn how to jump."

"That's how you did it," Yang points out. 

"That's not how I—" I realize Yang means that I literally learned how to fly, with Crescent's aid, and is intentionally misunderstanding me just to get under my skin. "Oh, you stop it and leave Blake alone!"

"Hmmm," Yang hums gleefully, a big dung-eating grin on her face as I drag Blake out of the stables.

Once inside the castle, I keep huffing and puffing until Blake digs her heels in and doesn't let me lead her around by the hand anymore. "Everything good?" she asks.

"Everything is fine," I say, "I just have had a weird day."

Blake agrees with a soft noise. Her hands both hold my wrist, nails tracing along the intricate vinework on my skin. "Want to tell me about it?" her ears flicker forward. 

In the privacy of my room I admit to her that I felt her presence all day. "I'm worried. The bond we share with Crescent— I don't want it to take over us. Being that tightly linked didn't do Ren and Nora any good in the long run."

Relaxing on the edge of my bed, Blake's gold eyes track me as I pace back and forth. Rock solid as ever, she takes this all in with her usual cool level-headedness. "Ren was a fringe case."

"I know, but I just don't know. I mean I've felt you before but this is different. It was like every time I turned around I'd see you, but when I did I... You weren't there with me."

I turn around then, and the relief I feel when I see her is so deep it aches. 

_There she is. The love of my life._

"I'm with you now," she points out, like she knows what I'm thinking. Opening up her arms, she twitches her fingers inward and I fly towards her. We go down on to the bed, tangled up in a clinging hug. Grabbing my chin to guide my kiss, Blake strokes me with her tongue, urging me to do the same. Facing each other, we lie on the bed, kissing harder, and arching closer with every kiss.

Then she pulls back, a deep frown on her face.

"Blake?" Leaning in closer, she starts huffing at my collar. I squirm, not used to the feeling of her hot breath on my neck, and not sure what to do when she tilts my head to sniff me more. "Blake!"

Then she starts laughing. "Ruby," she says, "Do you think maybe you were just smelling me all day?"

It doesn't click until I remember. The first thing I did this morning was apply Blake's personal perfume, wondering if it would make me smell as good as her. While it faded over the course of the day...

_If Blake can still smell it on me..._

I probably could, too. I had merely become too accustomed to it to be able to notice.

 **Oh,** Crescent says, **That's adorable.**

"You were no help at all," I accuse her, and Blake snickers. "Seriously! She was mooning about you too."

Blake takes the chance to stretch, her hands high above her head. Her eyes are shut tightly in satisfaction, a series of pops escaping every joint. Once she's done, she snuggles closer, kissing my cheeks and my neck again. 

"I'm flattered." Taking a handful of my hair, she inhales deeply. "I didn't realize it would smell so good on you." She ducks her head down, face against the spot where I'd applied the perfume that morning. Licking it once, she smiles when I start squirming. 

"It tastes good, too, huh?"

"You always taste good." To demonstrate, she licks me again, rougher this time.

I clutch onto her shirt, bury my face against it. It's clean and freshly laundered and it smells like soap but mostly it smells like her. Blake's tongue laps at me, and when I feel a hint of sharp teeth I _moan_. 

Startled, Blake stops mid-nibble. I'm uncomfortably warm, sweat prickling the back of my neck and my palms. I feel damp all over, about to melt into a wet puddle of want, and I'm so embarrassed I could die. 

**My, my. That just slipped out, did it?**

_I'm going back into the void and turning you into a baby dragon again,_ I snap back, and Crescent scurries away. 

Daring to peek up at Blake, I find her smiling down at me, soft and warm. Her tail slinks over my hip, a loving caress. She doesn't ask if I'm okay or press, but she doesn't retreat, either. We're comfortable where we are, until I tentatively kiss her again. There's no room or desire for questions after that. Not when I've been wanting her all day, more than ever before. 

Blake's playful streak emerges in full force, gentle and patient, making me laugh until suddenly I'm incapable of laughing anymore. It goes by so fast I forget to feel shy, until I'm shaking, unsettled and bubbling up. Tension rises, tightening and trembling harder until it boils over into Blake's mouth, and I'm left staring at my bedroom ceiling covered in my own sweat and gasping for breath.

"Oh, wow," I say, and Blake starts laughing. She kisses up my bare stomach, lips wet, and then drapes herself over me like a warm snake in the sun.

"So were we waiting until after the wedding to do that, or...?" she murmurs, mouth on my neck. Against all reason it still feels like being burned when she does that. It burns and it leaves me ravenous. With no small amount of dismay I realize that no matter how many times we do this, I might never be sated. It's that strong a hunger.

I flap one hand around, exhausted, until I find her bare backside. "You should have asked that before."

"I was more interested in learning all the new ways I can make you squeak." Her teeth find my ear, tugging firmly. Determined to pay her back, I let Blake teach me how, eager to explore her in ways that had been out of reach until now.

It's only afterwards, coiled tight together under the blankets, that I realize I'm the most at peace I've been since I returned from my trip to that other world, Luna's world. Like Q'row, I was marked by that place in a way no one else can see. It's something inside me, I think. Waiting in the nightmares.

But there aren't any nightmares waiting when I fall asleep.[ Just pure darkness, soft as silk and inky black,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-B5yr2zyY0) rich as the scent that fills my head and my lungs, lingering until it all fades away.

* * *

_Get a little closer, let fold_  
Cut open my sternum and pull  
My little ribs around you  
[The lungs of me be crowns over you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqw4wo8vdY8)

**Author's Note:**

> Not canon to the game. Just some fanfic requested by Val :)


End file.
